


The Way I Look At You

by surfacelvl



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Han Jisung | Han is Whipped, Love Triangle, Seo Changbin is Whipped, Y/N doesn't give a fuck, changbin and jisung rivalry, changbin and y/n are trapped in an elevator, changbin and y/n want to kill each other, changbin's contract with jyp is sexy but Y/N is sexier, claustrophobia warning???, felix mention, side jisung, skz - Freeform, stray kids - Freeform, y/n
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surfacelvl/pseuds/surfacelvl
Summary: Han Jisung is smitten with Stray Kids' new manager. Changbin doesn't get it. He begins to figure it out though, when he's trapped in an elevator with her in the middle of the night.
Relationships: Seo Changbin/Original Female Character(s), Seo Changbin/Reader, Seo Changbin/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	The Way I Look At You

**Author's Note:**

> this is not a song fic but gwan by rostam is pertinent heh
> 
> 216

When Changbin finally took his headphones off, the clock on his computer screen read past 1 o’clock in the morning. He swore under his breath, hating that there were no windows in the studio to tell him when it got dark. He’d slipped away after practice, sending a quick text to Chan that he’d be home before midnight this time. Chan had just liked the message without replying, so Changbin knew that he didn’t believe him. Changbin hated that the leader had been right again. 

He transferred the new tracks to his laptop and put it in his bag. Before he flicked off the lights he gave the studio one last survey, making sure he hadn’t left a flash drive or a scrap of paper with lyrics scribbled on it, anything that could be a spoiler if it ended up in the wrong hands. He deemed it clear and tugged his backpack strap tighter on his shoulder as he headed into the hall. 

Even at 1 a.m., Changbin knew the JYP building wasn’t completely quiet. On the floors below, trainees rehearsed in practice rooms and digital editors stitched together hours of footage into three-minute-long music videos. But the floor Changbin was on seemed deserted. He enjoyed the silence; bass and synth had been blasting into his ears for hours. He walked down the long hall of closed doors, towards the elevators. The exhaustion of a full day of practice and a late night in the studio was finally starting to wear on him, his shoulders sagging with the relief of knowing he was on his way to his bed.

A door on the right side of the hall nearly slammed into Changbin just as he was about to pass it. He yelped and jolted back, his hands squeezing his backpack straps as he collided with the opposite wall. The girl in the doorway, the offender, stared at him, eyes wide but unblinking as she tried to hold back a laugh.

Changbin huffed out a sigh and peeled himself from the wall. “You gave me a heart attack.”

The girl raised her hands in mock-defense. “What? I can’t open doors now?”

“No one said you can’t-” Changbin cut himself off. He was too tired and he really didn’t want to argue, not with her. A thought crept into Changbin’s mind, unbidden. You don’t want to argue when you know you can’t win. He ignored it. “Goodnight, Y/N.” 

She was still looking at him like she expected a rebuttal. Sensing that there wasn’t one coming, she offered a little wave. “Goodnight, Changbin.” 

The way she said it was singsongy and playful, but wry on the delivery. Changbin stared. He didn’t know what that meant. He returned her wave and set back off down the hall. Behind him, he heard her go into another room.

Y/N had joined JYP last summer on an internship. She’d been favored by the supervisors and was invited to stay and train for a position in the company. No one had ever turned down that sort of offer from JYP and Y/N was no exception. She worked mostly with TWICE, assisting and shadowing their managers, taking care of the girls in between stages and during travel. But whenever Stray Kids was promoting and found themselves down a manager or an assistant, the company sent Y/N their way.

The other guys were thrilled whenever fate brought Y/N to them. Jisung had an obvious crush on her and Chan didn’t want to talk to anyone else when she was around. Jeongin and Felix thought that there wasn’t a funnier person in the world. The whole group loved her, loved that she wasn’t as quiet or professional as the other managers, loved that they could talk to someone besides each other. And she was a girl their age. It was perfect.

But Changbin was skeptical.

Sure, Y/N was funny and vibrant, but she was distracting. Twice now, Minho had almost been late to starting music show stages because he was telling her about his cats. And she was always stirring up the energy in the greenroom when Changbin was trying to rest. At their last show, Changbin had been just about to fall asleep on Bangchan’s shoulder when Y/N came in singing, arms loaded with iced coffee for everyone. Chan had bolted out of his seat to help her carry the trays, nailing a half-asleep Changbin in the eye with his shoulder. 

But Jisung’s crush on her grated him most of all. Y/N knew about idols and dating just as well as the rest of them, but she never shut him down. Jisung got this face when he flirted, his eyes all doe-like and soft, eyebrows scrunching together. The face always came out when Y/N came to work with a new hair color or did her makeup differently. When she poked fun at Hyunjin’s expressions to the camera or had a snarky reply for Jisung himself, the face came out. 

Changbin was sick of it. If any sort of rumors floated out, any paparazzi photos, Jisung’s career would be at stake. And Y/N’s time at JYP would be over.

Not that he cared about whether she stayed or went. Changbin was sure that Y/N didn’t like him either. He always caught her looking at him with a disgusted expression on her face. Well - maybe disgusted wasn’t the right word. More confused, like she didn’t know what to make of him.

It pissed Changbin off. Just because he wasn’t fawning over her like the rest of them didn’t mean she shouldn’t like him. Not that he wanted her to like him. He just didn’t think it was fair.

Changbin pressed the ‘down’ button for the elevator. He checked his phone and found a text from his driver, ready and waiting below to take him back to the dorm took up the screen. There was a smooth whirring noise and the elevator doors ping-ed open. Changbin stepped inside and leaned against the wall, the steel wall cold even through his black sweatshirt.

He tried to shake thoughts of Y/N from his head. He’d gotten caught up thinking about her at night before, and he always ended up too keyed up to sleep. Another distraction. Always Y/N.

“Wait! Hold the doors!”

Always.

Changbin thought about letting the doors close. Then he kicked himself mentally. Don’t be an asshole. He stuck his arm out to stop the closing doors. Why would you give her more reasons to hate you? 

Y/N stepped inside and stood in the opposite corner from Changbin. She glanced at the button board, but didn’t press anything. Also heading to the parking garage, apparently. Her headphones were in, head bobbing along to the music. Changbin didn’t care. In fact, this was ideal. He could be chivalrous, but that didn’t mean he had to pretend to be nice. He pulled his mask up over his mouth and watched the floor numbers tick downward. 

Just as floor number nine was about to become floor number eight, Changbin felt a swaying beneath his feet. He glanced over to see if Y/N had felt anything, but the walls around them suddenly jolted to a grinding halt and he lost his balance, stumbling right into her. 

The lights flickered above them as the elevator stabilized, the floor numbers glitching between eight and nine. It was stopped.

The two of them were both breathing unsteadily. Y/N caught herself with her back pressed against the wall, both hands gripping the railing behind her. To keep himself from falling on top of her, Changbin caught himself with his hands on either side of her head, their faces inches apart. He could hear the WOODZ song still playing in her headphones.

A rushing, quiet realization came over him right then that he’d never seen Y/N this close before. He always kept his distance, eyeing her from across greenrooms and from the far backseat of the company van. Her makeup really was lovely. Dark and reddish, radiating up from thick black lashes. 

Beneath him, Y/N’s breathing was shaky. Right, Changbin thought. Elevator. 

Changbin pushed himself away from the wall and stepped back towards his corner. “I’ll call down to the first floor. I’m sure they already know something’s wrong.”

“Okay.” Y/N exhaled in a gust.

Before Changbin could find the right contact, he was getting a call from Chan. 

“Are you still at the studio?” Chan’s voice was urgent, anxious.

“Not on purpose.” 

“Did you feel the earthquake? Is everything ok there? You should just come home now.”

Changbin glanced at the flickering floor number, dancing between eight and nine, then over at Y/N, who seemed to be coming back to herself. She was sat on the elevator floor, headphones out of her ears, nails clicking rapidly against her phone screen.

“I’m trying to come home.” Changbin glanced at his phone clock. Nearly two in the morning. “I’m stuck in the elevator. I guess the earthquake must have set off some sort of emergency stop.” 

Chan groaned. “No! I’ll call the security desk for you. Are you alone? We have to get you out of there. Are you scared?”

Chan didn’t seem very tired, at least. He was awake enough to keep firing off questions faster than they could be answered.

“Yeah, please call them for me, thanks. And I’m not alone, Y/N is h-”

“Y/N? Is she okay? Should I talk to her? Felix is here, should I have him call 911? Is she scared?” Chan’s voice got more panicked with every question. Changbin knew the man well enough to tell when his friend was starting to get too worked up.

Changbin couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. “Y/N is fine. I am also fine. Please call the security desk so I can come home.” 

Y/N looked up at the sound of her name, raising both eyebrows and looking pointedly at the phone. Changbin mouthed Bangchan hyung. She lit up a little at that. Changbin clenched his free hand so hard that his fingernails printed pink crescents into the soft skin of his palm. 

Eventually, Changbin ushered Chan off of the phone, followed out by promises to keep calling the security desk until they were committed to the rescue mission. Changbin called anyway, unsurprised to find the frantic, deeply apologetic voice of the head of security on the other end, promising to get them out as soon as possible.

“A hour, sir.” The man said. “Possibly less.”

Changbin hung up and eased himself onto the floor opposite Y/N. She made a face when they made eye contact. 

“Security said an hour.” A pause. “Are you okay?”

Y/N’s hand, gently pulling at her hair, stopped for a moment so fleeting that Changbin decided he must have imagined it. 

“I’m fine.” She said it too quick, like dropping something you didn’t want to touch in the first place. Changbin didn’t know what to do with that. 

“Good thing this elevator is roomy, I guess.” 

“Good thing you’re not taller.”

Changbin thought he’d misheard her. Now? Now she wanted to make a short joke? He wanted to spit the same poison back at her, to say something about her dyed hair or her jelly sandals. But looked at her and he didn’t see anything he disliked enough to take a jab at. He didn’t see anything he disliked, period. She infuriated him.

“Did you just talk to Chan?” She looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully, fingers still pulling at her hair. The tension from a moment ago was apparently one-sided. “Was Jisung there?”

Something feral and hostile erupted in Changbin’s stomach, so fast and fiery that he strained something in his jaw from clenching down so roughly. She just had to nail him with every fucking word that came out of her mouth, huh?

Changbin yanked his mask down from his mouth. “I guess you really are fine then.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Y/N leaned forward. Her eyes were challenging, hard and unblinking. In daylight, he might’ve shied away, decided that it wasn’t worth it to get in her face. But he had been awake far longer than he wanted to be and he didn’t care that it wasn’t her fault.

“You’re acting like your usual self.” Her eyes flashed and Changbin leaned into his frustration before he could decide against it. “Just - constantly - getting under my skin.”  
“What the fuck? What have I ever done-?”

“Just leave him alone alright? He gets distracted easily enough without you there to stuff up his head.” 

Her face was twisted in disbelief. hair pulling momentarily forgotten. “You’re worried about Jisung? He’s twenty years old, you think he can’t handle himself?” 

“Are you blind?” Changbin wasn’t shouting, but the way Y/N reacted, like he’d spat in her face, made him dial it down to a hiss. “He has a crush on you. You’ve seen him, you can’t miss it. He turns into jelly when you’re around. If anything happens…” He took a grounding breath. “If anything happens between you two. It will be over for him. Over. And you’ll be gone. You should know the policy better than anyone else. You are a distraction.”

When Changbin looked up, his blood ran cold. Her gaze had transformed from stormy rage, to a cool, icy stare. She sat up straighter and folded her hands over her knees.

Changbin knew he’d fucked up. He knew he got something wrong. And she would make him regret it. He knew she could.

“Maybe I’m blind, Changbin? Do you pay any attention at all? I talked to Jisung about his crush on me a month ago. I wouldn’t date him even if I wanted him. I know the rules about my own job, thanks.” The words fell hot and fast, each one finely crafted in the art of tearing her opponent down. “And he’s not stupid, he wants a career, not a manager for a girlfriend. He can handle a crush that won’t go anywhere better than you’re handling the idea of a relationship that does.” She didn’t break eye contact the whole way through. “A relationship that wouldn’t even be yours.” 

“I just-”

“And a distraction? To who?” She gave him the floor to speak. Changbin felt his face begin to burn. He mumbled his answer to his lap. She said “Sorry?” but Changbin didn’t think she was.

He forced himself to look at her. “To the other members. They’re so- so infatuated with you. Seungmin gets all flustered when he hears you’re assigned to us and Jeongin is always glued to your side. And Jisung’s…” He spat the next word. “...face. He’s so focused in the studio and so dedicated at practice, but I see the way he looks at you and I wonder if I’ll ever see him focused like that again.”

When Y/N spoke again, she was forcing her voice to be even and calm. The heat of the argument still simmered, but Changbin was tired and he could only assume she was too. The two of them sat slumped facing each other, sapped of late night adrenaline.

“I’m your manager, Changbin.” Y/N glanced at the elevator doors, still closed tight. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your boys are nervous. They go out on world stages every day and give everything they have. Everyone is watching them and they know it. If they slip up once, they’re embarrassed online forever. Sometimes they need a distraction, even if that means messing around with the new girl.” Changbin watched her mouth form each word, lips rounding each vowel. He liked the way she spoke, her accent and the enthusiasm packed into the words she bent to her will. He received a kick against his shoe and his gaze found hers again. Those lips smiled, just a little bit, then said “I think you know that better than anyone.”

Changbin decided looking down at his hands in his lap was safer than looking at her. There were so many things for his gaze to get snagged on, so many little details about her that piqued his interest. 

“Why were you here so late?” Changbin asked.

Y/N rolled her eyes and he wondered if she thought he was deflecting from the argument she’d just won. He was.

She answered anyways. “Chaeyoung left a lyric sheet in one of the studios. She called me freaking out about someone finding it and leaking it. So I came and got it.” She patted her bag.  
Changbin felt like an asshole. 

“Y/N,” Changbin said. “You’re a good manager.”

She blinked, but quirked her lips into a cute expression and bobbled her head a bit. “I kn-”

A loud, groaning sound vibrated up through the elevator. The metal wall behind Changbin tapped against his head, hard and cold, but he was too scared to move. He could only think about the empty shaft below, like a dark gaping mouth waiting to swallow them both.

The sound stopped, along with the vibrating. Changbin let out all of his breath at once. Y/N had her eyes closed, fingers pressed white into the floor. Everything was somehow more still than it was before, the floor numbers continuing their silent flickering. 

The overhead lights blinked once, then twice. Then the elevator was plunged into darkness.

Y/N screamed. Changbin would have too, but all of the air in his lungs was gone. Fear clouded every thought. Were they falling? There was no way to tell up from down except for the seeping cold of the metal walls. Surely there were more walls now than before? Changbin felt them pressing on him from all sides. The placid, if troubled, atmosphere in the elevator was gone, replaced by cold, unforgivable, oppressive darkness. 

A second passed, then ten. Changbin didn’t know if his eyes were open or closed, but they weren’t falling. The formidable maw that was the elevator shaft was still below them. It was just dark. Crushingly, suffocatingly dark, albeit, but still. Just dark. 

“Are you okay?” Changbin whispered into the darkness. His voice was too loud; he expected it to be swallowed up into the inky space. 

“What do you think?” Y/N’s voice replied, cracking on the last word. Changbin had to admire that about her. Even while terrified, in a situation with an unforeseeable end, she could come back with a flippant comment. 

“I’ll call security again. This has to be- this has to be them,” Changbin said. His phone screen momentarily blinded him. Damn. 9%. “I’m sure everything is fine.” He sounded more confident than he felt. His heart was thundering so loudly in his chest that he was sure Y/N would hear it and call his bluff. 

“You can’t know that!” Changbin stopped mid-dial. The echoes from Y/N’s shout ping pong’d around the elevator. “This was annoying at first, but now it’s so- it’s so scary.” She let out a shuttering exhale and began to cry.

Changbin was moving before he could think about what to do. He felt his way along the floor to the opposite wall. He sat down gently next to Y/N, careful to make noise so that he didn’t scare her. Slowly, while ignoring all of the self-placed warning bells going off in his head, he lifted an arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. He felt her muscles tense and he realized he didn’t think they had ever touched before. 

No, Changbin thought. She fixed my mic pack once.

It had just been a second, when he’d realized it was slipping right before he was supposed to go on stage. The rest of the members were waiting for their entrance in the upstage wings, away from him, and Y/N had been right there. It would have been stupid not to ask her. He’d lifted his shirt and she tugged the mic belt up his waist from behind him, then retucked in the wires. She reached up his back to secure his in-ear with more tape, pulled his shirt back down, and left.

Changbin couldn’t stop thinking about the feeling of her hands on his bare skin for the whole performance. And for the whole van ride home. 

Y/N relaxed under Changbin’s arm. He waited for her to tense up again, to scream at him for touching her. But she didn’t. She just muffled her cries in her sleeve.

He pulled his phone back out and called the first floor. The head of security was apologetic again, loaded with answers to the questions he knew were coming. 

“We had to cut the main power to the elevator, sir,” he said. “In order to open it manually.” 

“Did you think to call and warn us first?” Changbin hissed into his phone. The shock of the sudden plunge into darkness was still fresh. Y/N still shook next to him, so subtly that he could only feel it because she shifted and pressed herself into his side. He heard her sniffle a few times, the kind that comes when tears keep falling even after you’ve decided to stop crying. Changbin was glad he couldn’t see her upset. He was a sympathetic crier.

He relayed the conversation to Y/N. The security guard had said they were close to circuit breaking the elevator panel and being able to open the doors. They just had to wait a little longer.

“Do you want to listen to music?” He asked.

Her head shook no against his shoulder. “Earlier you said… Jisung’s face. Like… what do you mean? About his face when he looks at me.”

“I thought you said you didn’t like him!”

“I don’t! I really, actually don’t. But the way you said it made me want to know.”

Changbin didn’t want to relive it anymore than he already did. But he supposed he would be curious, too, if someone looked at him like that. 

“It’s whenever you do your makeup in a new way. Or have your hair tied up instead of down. Or even when you’re making fun of him. His eyebrows push together and his eyes get all… all soft. His lower lip goes lax and he just stares at you like you’re the only one in the world.” Recalling it made Changbin’s stomach knot up. He loved Jisung, really, truly loved him like a brother, but that face made Changbin want to land a swift punch to his jawbone.

Y/N giggled. Changbin had never thought it was funny before. It had always seemed more like… well, an obstacle.

Y/N adjusted her position and her hand brushed past his hip. Changbin stiffened. He thought about grabbing her hand, intertwining their fingers together and holding the back of her hand against his thigh. Then he thought about pushing her away, prying open the elevators doors himself, and running all the way back to the dorm. Then his thoughts were on her hands again, how they’d felt against his bare back, brushing the skin of his waist.

“I’m surprised he never told you,” she said. Changbin hoped she hadn’t noticed him begin to sweat. “That I turned him down.”

“He doesn’t think I like you very much,” Changbin said. “So I guess he didn’t think I would care either way.”

“Do you?”

“To be honest,” Changbin said. “I haven’t been your biggest fan. Thought that was mutual.” He recognized the irony of the moment, Y/N in his arms as the two of them huddled into a single square foot of a fairly spacious elevator. But desperate times.

“No,” Y/N answered. “I meant, would you care?”

That feral, angry thing in Changbin’s stomach growled as his thoughts turned to Y/N and Jisung. He thought of them carrying out a secret romance, hiding from the public eye, trying to keep Y/N’s identity unknown. Them holding hands in the privacy of green rooms and kissing in the dorms. He thought of Y/N mirroring Jisung’s sappy face back to him, the two of them utterly smitten with each other.

Changbin thought he might burn the JYP building down before he let that happen.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t care.”

“Bullshit!” Y/N yelled and Changbin jumped, knocking his head back against the wall. 

“What are you talking about?” Changbin rubbed his head and wished more than anything he could see her face, but he already knew what he’d see if he could. Those eyes, alight with the excitement of confrontation, and chin tucked low, just daring him to lose to her. 

“I just mean that,” Y/N began. She settled back against him, resting her head against his shoulder. “Even if Jisung does look at me like that. It is nothing, nothing compared to the way you look at me.” 

Changbin felt like he was put on pause. He knew he looked at Y/N a lot, noticed her whenever she walked into a room. But how could anyone not? And what, amid all of the attention, had she seen in his gaze that wasn’t there in others?

He could only ask.

“How do I look at you, Y/N?”

“You look at me like you’re trying to break a code. Or solve a puzzle. Your head goes to the side and you hold your lips kinda pursed, like this -” Changbin waited. “Oh. You can’t see me, but you get it. Your eyes are so honest, though, like I always know it’s me you’re looking at. Sometimes I think there must be something in my teeth.”

Changbin straightened his head and pressed his lips together. “I’m not trying to solve anything, it’s the way the other mem-”

“Fuck off with the other members! Stop pretending they have anything to do with the way you look at me.”

“They have,” Changbin started. “everything to do with the way I feel about you.”

The temperature inside the elevator began to climb as Changbin realized what he said.

Y/N said, “What?” and Changbin realized she’d gone stiff against him.

“I didn’t-”

“Yes, you did.”

Changbin wondered if he should remove his arm. But Y/N, half-laying on his chest, wasn’t showing signs of moving either.

“Changbin,” Y/N said, quietly. Or maybe she’d shouted it. Changbin’s heart was racing in his chest and words, possible explanations to Y/N, to himself, were flashing through his mind before he could begin to consider them. “How do you feel about me?”

Trapped, Changbin thought. I’m trapped. But strangely, he didn’t feel like he thought he should. The elevator doors were still closed tight and the blackness of the room pushed down relentlessly on his eyes, straining to see something, anything. But the foreign weight of Y/N’s head on his chest was warm and assuring. He thought her hair smelled nice. 

“I don’t know,” Changbin said, and it was true. Y/N snorted but he pushed on before she could interrupt. “Some days, I am sure that I hate you. The first day you came to work with us, I hated you on sight.” He didn’t like to say it, didn’t want to. He swallowed. “I’ll see you with Jisung and I get angry because I’m scared for him. And for you, too, really. But I see you laugh so hard you cry, or mouth every verse to our songs off stage.” Changbin laughed a little bit, a half-hearted, nervous thing, but he was the only one. “And that pisses me off too. But I’ve never hated anyone on sight. And all of the other guys like you so much. I just think… I think that I want to hate you so badly because I can’t have you.” And it was out. Changbin didn’t like how raw it sounded, how carnal. “Because I like you,” he amended. 

Still, Y/N didn’t speak. He’d never heard her be silent for so long, never realized how badly he wanted to hear her say his name. He wished she’d make fun of him.

Instead, she uncurled herself from him and pushed away, and Changbin was suddenly cold, alone in the darkness. The hand that had been resting on her arm felt so useless, limp in his lap. He tried to look in the direction she’d disappeared, to make out a shadow of an expression, an outline of what she could possibly be thinking.

There was only blackness, final and unforgiving.

Maybe that was it. Y/N had said that she wouldn’t date Jisung even if she liked him that way. And she didn’t like Changbin, period, that much was clear. He’d messed up long ago, when hating her was easier than liking her. Maybe he could go back to that; what had it been, an hour?

But he knew that charade was over, at least on his side. He had given her nothing but reasons to hate him.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” Changbin said. “If the way I acted ever hurt-”

A hand pressed softly into his chest and another was on his shoulder, feeling along his neck to his jaw. His breath caught in his chest as his chin was tilted to the side and Y/N’s lips pressed into his. The smell of her hair intoxicated him, strong and rosy, heady and unmistakably hers. Changbin’s mind was full of her name, her lips, her hand sliding down to press into his thigh.

He leaned into the kiss, as if he could ever get close enough, as if he could ever make up for the time he’d spent staring instead of touching her. His hand found the back of her neck and pulled her close, close, close. 

Sleep, Changbin thought, would be nice. Finally going home would be good, too. But both paled in comparison to the sensation of pulling Y/N into his lap and feeling both of her hands cradle his face while he kissed her.

At some point, they had to pull away. Changbin, trying desperately to regulate his breathing, said “I thought you were trying to respect JYP’s rules.”

“Were you planning on telling?” Y/N replied.

He wasn’t. He’d never say another word again if it meant she would keep running her fingers through his hair. 

“Could you turn your phone flashlight on? Mine is dead,” Y/N said. 

“Mine is almost dead, too. And we need it in case security calls.”

“Just for a really quick second. I want to see you.”

He obliged. With the phone flashlight facing towards the ceiling, Changbin could actually see the person he’d been kissing.

“You have makeup smears all over your face,” he said.

“And? So do you?” She sneered at him. Changbin never thought he’d miss that. 

“Y/N?” Changbin asked and her eyes met his. “How do you look at me?”

“Um, I can’t see myself so how could I tell you that.”

“Fine,” he amended. “How do you see me?”

She looked down and started pulling at her hair again. Changbin was used to seeing her confident and cocksure, every single day. This shade of her was uncharted territory. 

“I see you as someone I’m into. Don’t get me wrong - you’re so fucking annoying. But I knew I liked you a while ago. I didn’t mean for us to get trapped in an elevator, though. I was just gonna live with it and move on.”

“You’re so chill about it.” Changbin said, awestruck. 

“Not all of us have to detest our crushes in order to deal with our feelings, Changbin,” she said sweetly. “Some of us have jobs.”

A piece of Changbin’s old anger stirred in his stomach and he was ready to be mean back to her, to finally land a proper insult against her. But she kissed him again, deep and slow, and it withered away into dust.

Y/N fell asleep with her head tucked into Changbin’s neck and fingers slotted tightly together with his. Her breathing became soft and even and when Changbin checked his phone for the time, the glow of the screen lit up the purple strands of hair across her face, pluming gently out with each exhale. 

He didn’t know how he would continue this, but he would. He didn’t know how he would tell Jisung, but he would. He would do what he had to do to stay with her. Maybe he could join TWICE.

The doors were finally pried open at 3:01 a.m. Light poured in from the bottom half of the opening, which was bisected horizontally by the bottom of the ninth floor. Y/N stirred against Changbin and she squinted in the light. There were dried mascara tracks down her cheeks and her lips were puffy. Changbin felt his cheeks heat up when he realized his must be too. 

A voice called out from the open doors. Changbin turned to see the head of security leaning forward into the elevator from the eighth floor, holding a flashlight in one hand.

“Did you hear me, sir?” The man called. “Are you alright? Sir?”

“Sorry,” Changbin said. Y/N sat up and Changbin untangled himself from her, but he didn’t want to look away. His thumb was rubbing circles into the back of the hand of the girl he’d convinced himself he hated. The mouth that could split him open and gut him so easily was the same one that had just been kissing his neck, his cheeks, his lips. He placed their joined hands behind him, where the security team couldn’t seem them. Where he wouldn’t have to let go. “Sorry, I was distracted.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twt @sramjoon ha


End file.
